Chantry House

On which Clarence declared that he would let the doctor know that he himself would be responsible for the cost of the attendance, and set off for Wattlesea, a kind of town village in the flat below.  He could not get back till dinner was half over, and came in alarmed and apologetic; but he had nothing worse to encounter than Griff’s unmerciful banter (or, as you would call it, chaff) about his knight errantry, and Emily’s lovely heroine in the sweetest of cottage bonnets.

Griff could be slightly tyrannous in his merry mockery, and when he found that on the ensuing day Clarence proposed to go and inquire after the patient, he made such wicked fun of the expectations the pair entertained of hearing the sweet cottage bonnet reading a tract in a silvery voice through the hovel window, that he fairly teased and shamed Clarence out of starting till the renowned Tom Petty arrived and absorbed all the three brothers, and even their father, in delights as mysterious to me as to Emily.  How she shrieked when Martyn rushed triumphantly into the room where we were arranging books with the huge patriarch of all the rats dangling by his tail!  Three hopeful families were destroyed; rooms, vaults, and cellars examined and cleared; and Petty declared the race to be exterminated, picturesque ruffian that he was, in his shapeless hat, rusty velveteen, long leggings, a live ferret in his pocket, and festoons of dead rats over his shoulder.

Chapman, who regarded him much as the ferret did the rat, declared that the rabbits and hares would suffer from letting ‘that there chap’ show his face here on any plea; and, moreover, gave a grunt very like a scoff; at the idea of slumbers in the mullion rooms (as they were called) being secured by his good offices.

And Chapman was right.  The unaccountable noises broke out again—screaming, wailing, sobbing—sounds scarcely within the power of cat or rat, but possibly the effect of the wind in the old building.  At any rate, Griff could not stand them, and declared that sleep was impossible when the wind was in that quarter, so that he must shift his bedroom elsewhere, though he still wished to retain the outer apartment, which he had taken pleasure in adorning with his special possessions.  My mother would scarcely have tolerated such fancies in any one else, but Griff had his privileges.

CHAPTER X

OUR TUNEFUL CHOIR

‘The church has been whitewashed, but right long ago,As the cracks and the dinginess amply doth show;About the same time that a strange petrifactionConfined the incumbent to mere Sunday action.So many abuses in this place are rife,The only church things giving token of lifeAre the singing within and the nettles without—Both equally rampant without any doubt.’F. R. Havergal.

All Griff’s teasing could not diminish—nay, rather increased—Emily’s excitement in the hope of seeing and identifying the sweet cottage bonnet at church on Sunday.  The distance we had to go was nearly two miles, and my mother and I drove thither in a donkey chair, which had been hunted up in London for that purpose because the ‘pheeāton’ (as the servants insisted on calling it) was too high for me.  My father had an old-fashioned feeling about the Fourth Commandment, which made him scrupulous as to using any animal on Sunday; and even when, in bad weather, or for visitors, the larger carriage was used, he always walked.  He was really angry with Griff that morning for mischievously maintaining that it was a greater breach of the commandment to work an ass than a horse.

It was a pretty drive on a road slanting gradually through the brushwood that clothed the steep face of the hillside, and passing farms and meadows full of cattle—all things quieter and stiller than ever in their Sunday repose.  We knew that the living was in Winslow patronage, but that it was in the hands of one of the Selby connection, who held it, together with it is not safe to say how many benefices, and found it necessary for his health to reside at Bath.  The vicarage had long since been turned into a farmhouse, and the curate lived at Wattlesea.  All this we knew, but we had not realised that he was likewise assistant curate there, and only favoured Earlscombe with alternate morning and evening services on Sundays.

Still less were we prepared for the interior of the church.  It had a picturesque square tower covered with ivy, and a general air of fitness for a sketch; indeed, the photograph of it in its present beautified state will not stand a comparison with our drawings of it, in those days of dilapidation in the middle of the untidy churchyard, with little boys astride on the sloping, sunken lichen-grown headstones, mullein spikes and burdock leaves, more graceful than the trim borders and zinc crosses which are pleasanter to the mental eye.

The London church we had left would be a fearful shock to the present generation, but we were accustomed to decency, order, and reverence; and it was no wonder that my father was walking about the churchyard, muttering that he never saw such a place, while my brothers were full of amusement.  Their spruce looks in their tall hats, bright ties, dark coats, and white trowsers strapped tight under their boots, looked incongruous with the rest of the congregation, the most distinguished members of which were farmers in drab coats with huge mother-of-pearl buttons, and long gaiters buttoned up to their knees and strapped up to their gay waistcoats over their white corduroys.  Their wives and daughters were in enormous bonnets, fluttering with ribbons; but then what my mother and Emily wore were no trifles.  The rest of the congregation were—the male part of it—in white or gray smock-frocks, the elderly women in black bonnets, the younger in straw; but we had not long to make our observations, for Chapman took possession of us.  He was parish clerk, and was in great glory in his mourning coat and hat, and his object was to marshal us all into our pew before he had to attend upon the clergyman; and of course I was glad enough to get as soon as possible out of sight of all the eyes not yet accustomed to my figure.

And hidden enough I was when we had been introduced through the little north chancel door into a black-curtained, black-cushioned, black-lined pew, well carpeted, with a table in the midst, and a stove, whose pipe made its exit through the floriated tracery of the window overhead.  The chancel arch was to the west of us, blocked up by a wooden parcel-gilt erection, and to the east a decorated window that would have been very handsome if two side-lights had not been obscured by the two Tables of the Law, with the royal arms on the top of the first table, and over the other our own, with the Fordyce in a scutcheon of pretence; for, as an inscription recorded, they had been erected by Margaret, daughter of Christopher Fordyce, Esquire, of Chantry House, and relict of Sir James John Winslow, Kt., sergeant-at-law, A.D. 1700—the last date, I verily believe, at which anything had been done to the church.  And on the wall, stopping up the southern chancel window, was a huge marble slab, supported by angels blowing trumpets, with a very long inscription about the Fordyce family, ending with this same Margaret, who had married the Winslow, lost two or three infants, and died on 1st January 1708, three years later than her husband.

Thus far I could see; but Griff was standing lifting the curtain, and showing by the working of his shoulders his amazement and diversion, so that only the daggers in my mother’s eyes kept Martyn from springing up after him.  What he beheld was an altar draped in black like a coffin, and on the step up to the rail, boys and girls eating apples and performing antics to beguile the waiting time, while a row of white-smocked old men occupied the bench opposite to our seat, conversing loud enough for us to hear them.

My father and Clarence came in; the bells stopped; there was a sound of steps, and in the fabric in front of us there emerged a grizzled head and the back of a very dirty surplice besprinkled with iron moulds, while Chapman’s back appeared above our curtain, his desk (full of dilapidated prayer-books) being wedged in between us and the reading-desk.

The duet that then took place between him and the curate must have been heard to be credible, especially as, being so close behind the old man, we could not fail to be aware of all the remarkable shots at long words which he bawled out at the top of his voice, and I refrain from recording, lest they should haunt others as they have done by me all my life.  Now and then Chapman caught up a long switch and dashed out at some obstreperous child to give an audible whack; and towards the close of the litany he stumped out—we heard his tramp the whole length of the church, and by and by his voice issued from an unknown height, proclaiming—‘Let us sing to the praise and glory – in an anthem taken from the 42d chapter of Genesis.’

There was an outburst of bassoon, clarionet, and fiddle, and the performance that followed was the most marvellous we had ever heard, especially when the big butcher—fiddling all the time—declared in a mighty solo, ‘I am Jo—Jo—Jo—Joseph!’ and having reiterated this information four or five times, inquired with equal pertinacity, ‘Doth—doth my fa-a-u-ther yet live?’  Poor Emily was fairly ‘convulsed;’ she stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth, and grew so crimson that my mother was quite frightened, and very near putting her out at the little door of excommunication.  To our last hour we shall never forget the shock of that first anthem.

The Commandments were read from the desk, Chapman’s solitary response coming from the gallery; and while the second singing—four verses from Tate and Brady—was going on, we beheld the surplice stripped off,—like the slough of a May-fly, as Griff said,—when a rusty black gown was revealed, in which the curate ascended the pulpit and was lost to our view before the concluding verse of the psalm, which we had reason to believe was selected in compliment to us, as well as to Earlscombe,—

‘My lot is fall’n in that blest land   Where God is truly know,He fills my cup with liberal hand;   ’Tis He—’tis He—’tis He—supports my throne.’

We had great reason to doubt how far the second line could justly be applied to the parish! but there was no judging of the sermon, for only detached sentences reached us in a sort of mumble.  Griff afterwards declared churchgoing to be as good as a comedy, and we all had to learn to avoid meeting each other’s eyes, whatever we might hear.  When the scuffle and tramp of the departing congregation had ceased, we came forth from our sable box, and beheld the remnants of a once handsome church, mauled in every possible way, green stains on the walls, windows bricked up, and a huge singing gallery.  Good bits of carved stall work were nailed anyhow into the pews; the floor was uneven; no font was visible; there was a mouldy uncared-for look about everything.  The curate in riding-boots came out of the vestry,—a pale, weary-looking man, painfully meek and civil, with gray hair sleeked round his face.  He ‘louted low,’ and seemed hardly to venture on taking the hand my father held out to him.  There was some attempt to enter into conversation with him, but he begged to be excused, for he had to hurry back to Wattlesea to a funeral.  Poor man! he was as great a pluralist as his vicar, for he kept a boys’ school, partially day, partially boarding, and his eyes looked hungrily at Martyn.

If the ‘sweet cottage bonnet’ had been at church there would have been little chance of discovering her, but we found that we were the only ‘quality,’ as Chapman called it, or things might not have been so bad.  Old James Winslow had been a mere fox-hunting squire till he became a valetudinarian; nor had he ever cared for the church or for the poor, so that the village was in a frightful state of neglect.  There was a dissenting chapel, old enough to be overgrown with ivy and not too hideous, erected by the Nonconformists in the reign of the Great Deliverer, but this partook of the general decadence of the parish, and, as we found, the chapel’s principal use was to serve as an excuse for not going to church.

My father always went to church twice, so he and Clarence walked to Wattlesea, where appearances were more respectable; but they heard the same sermon over again, and, as my father drily remarked, it was not a composition that would bear repetition.

He was much distressed at the state of things, and intended to write to the incumbent, though, as he said, whatever was done would end by being at his own expense, and the move and other calls left him so little in hand that he sighed over the difficulties, and declared that he was better off in London, except for the honour of the thing.  Perhaps my mother was of the same opinion after a dreary afternoon, when Griff and Martyn had been wandering about aimlessly, and were at length betrayed by the barking of a little terrier, purchased the day before from Tom Petty, besieging the stable cat, who stood with swollen tail, glaring eyes, and thunderous growls, on the top of the tallest pillar of the ruins.  Emily nearly cried at their cruelty.  Martyn was called off by my mother, and set down, half sulky, half ashamed, to Henry and his Bearer; and Griff, vowing that he believed it was that brute who made the row at night, and that she ought to be exterminated, strolled off to converse with Chapman, who was a quaint compound of clerk and keeper—in the one capacity upholding his late master, in the other bemoaning Mr. Mears’ unpunctualities, specially as regarded weddings and funerals; one ‘corp’ having been kept waiting till a messenger had been sent to Wattlesea, who finding both clergy out for the day, had had to go to Hillside, ‘where they was always ready, though the old Squire would have been mad with him if he’d a-guessed one of they Fordys had ever set foot in the parish.’

The only school in the place was close to the meeting-house, ‘a very dame’s school indeed,’ as Emily described it after a peep on Monday.  Dame Dearlove, the old woman who presided, was a picture of Shenstone’s schoolmistress,—black bonnet, horn spectacles, fearful birch rod, three-cornered buff ’kerchief, checked apron and all, but on meddling with her, she proved a very dragon, the antipodes of her name.  Tattered copies of the Universal Spelling-Book served her aristocracy, ragged Testaments the general herd, whence all appeared to be shouting aloud at once.  She looked sour as verjuice when my mother and Emily entered, and gave them to understand that ‘she wasn’t used to no strangers in her school, and didn’t want ’em.’  We found that in Chapman’s opinion she ‘didn’t larn ’em nothing.’  She had succeeded her aunt, who had taught him to read ‘right off,’ but ‘her baint to be compared with she.’  And now the farmers’ children, and the little aristocracy, including his own grand-children,—all indeed who, in his phrase, ‘cared for eddication,’—went to Wattlesea.

CHAPTER XI

‘THEY FORDYS.’

‘Of honourable reckoning are you both,And pity ’tis, you lived at odds so long.’Shakespeare.

My father had a good deal of business in hand, and was glad of Clarence’s help in writing and accounts,—a great pleasure, though it prevented his being Griff’s companion in his exploring and essays at shooting.  He had time, however, to make an expedition with me in the donkey chair to inquire after the herdboy, Amos Bell, and carry him some kitchen physic.  To our horror we found him quite alone in the wretched cottage, while everybody was out harvesting; but he did not seem to pity himself, or think it otherwise than quite natural, as he lay on a little bed in the corner, disabled by what Clarence thought a dislocation.  Miss Ellen had brought him a pudding, and little Miss Anne a picture-book.

He was not so dense and shy as the children of the hamlet near us, and Emily extracted from him that Miss Ellen was ‘Our passon’s young lady.’

‘Mr. Mears’!’ she exclaimed.

‘No: ourn be Passon Fordy.’

It turned out that this place was not in Earlscombe at all, but in Hillside, a different parish; and the boy, Amos, further communicated that there was old Passon Fordy, and Passon Frank, and Madam, what was Mr. Frank’s lady.  Yes, he could read, he could; he went to Sunday School, and was in Miss Ellen’s class; he had been to school worky days, only father was dead, and Farmer Hartop gave him a job.

It was plain that Hillside was under a very different rule from Earlscombe; and Emily was delighted to have discovered that the sweet cottage bonnet’s owner was called Ellen, which just then was the pet Christian name of romance, in honour of the Lady of the Lake.

In the midst of her raptures, however, just as we were about to turn in at our own gate into the wood, we heard horses’ hoofs, and then came, careering by on ponies, a very pretty girl and a youth of about the same age.  Clarence’s hand rose to his hat, and he made his eager bow; but the young lady did not vouchsafe the slightest acknowledgment, turned her head away, and urged her pony to speed.

Emily broke out with an angry disappointed exclamation.  Clarence’s face was scarlet, and he said low and hoarsely, ‘That’s Lester.  He was in the Argus at Portsmouth two years ago;’—and then, as our little sister continued her indignant exclamations, he added, ‘Hush!  Don’t on any account say a word about it.  I had better get back to my work.  I am only doing you harm by staying here.’

At which Emily shed tears, and together we persuaded him not to curtail his holiday, which, indeed, he could not have done without assigning the reason to the elders, and this was out of the question.  Nor did he venture to hang back when, as our service was to be on Sunday afternoon, my father proposed to walk to Hillside Church in the morning.  They came back well pleased.  There was care and decency throughout.  The psalms were sung to a ‘grinder organ’—which was an advanced state of things in those days—and very nicely.  Parson Frank read well and impressively, and the old parson, a fine venerable man, had preached an excellent sermon—really admirable, as my father repeated.  Our party had been scarcely in time, and had been disposed of in seats close to the door, where Clarence was quite out of sight of the disdainful young lady and her squire, of whom Emily begged to hear no more.

She looked askance at the cards left on the hall table the next day—‘The Rev. Christopher Fordyce,’ and ‘The Rev. F. C. Fordyce,’ also ‘Mrs. F. C. Fordyce, Hillside Rectory.’

We had found out that Hillside was a family living, and that there was much activity there on the part of the father and son—rector and curate; and that the other clerical folk, ladies especially, who called on us, spoke of Mrs. F. C. Fordyce with a certain tone, as if they were afraid of her, as Sir Horace Lester’s sister,—very superior, very active, very strict in her notions,—as if these were so many defects.  They were an offshoot of the old Fordyces of Chantry House, but so far back that all recollection of kindred or connection must have worn out.  Their property—all in beautiful order—marched with ours, and Chapman was very particular about the boundaries.  ‘Old master he wouldn’t have a bird picked up if it fell over on they Fordys’ ground—not he!  He couldn’t abide passons, couldn’t the old Squire—not Miss Hannah More, and all they Cheddar lot, and they Fordys least of all.  My son’s wife, she was for sending her little maid to Hillside to Madam Fordys’ school, but, bless your heart, ’twould have been as much as my place was worth if master had known it.’

The visit was not returned till after Clarence had gone back to his London work.  Sore as was the loss of him from my daily life, I could see that the new world and fresh acquaintances were a trial to him, and especially since the encounter with young Lester had driven him back into his shell, so that he would be better where he was already known and had nothing new to overcome.  Emily, though not yet sixteen, was emancipated from schoolroom habits, and the dear girl was my devoted slave to an extent that perhaps I abused.

Not being ‘come out,’ she was left at home on the day when we set out on a regular progress in the chariot with post-horses.  The britshka and pair, which were our ambition, were to wait till my father’s next rents came in.  Morning calls in the country were a solemn and imposing ceremony, and the head of the family had to be taken on the first circuit; nor was there much scruple as to making them in the forenoon, so several were to be disposed of before fulfilling an engagement to luncheon at the farthest point, where some old London friends had borrowed a house for the summer, and had included me in their invitation.

Here alone did I leave the carriage, but I had Cooper’s Spy and my sketch-book as companions while waiting at doors where the inhabitants were at home.  The last visit was at Hillside Rectory, a house of architecture somewhat similar to our own, but of the soft creamy stone which so well set off the vine with purple clusters, the myrtles and fuchsias, that covered it.  I was wishing we had drawn up far enough off for a sketch to be possible, when, from a window close above, I heard the following words in a clear girlish voice—

‘No, indeed!  I’m not going down.  It is only those horrid Earlscombe people.  I can’t think how they have the face to come near us!’

There was a reply, perhaps that the parents had made the first visit, for the rejoinder was—‘Yes; grandpapa said it was a Christian duty to make an advance; but they need not have come so soon.  Indeed, I wonder they show themselves at all.  I am sure I would not if I had such a dreadful son.’  Presently, ‘I hate to think of it.  That I should have thanked him.  Depend upon it, he will never pay the doctor.  A coward like that is capable of anything.’

The proverb had been realised, but there could hardly have been a more involuntary or helpless listener.  Presently my parents came back, escorted by both the gentlemen of the house, tall fine-looking men, the elder with snowy hair, and the dignity of men of the old school; the younger with a joyous, hearty, out-of-door countenance, more like a squire than a clergyman.

The visit seemed to have been gratifying.  Mrs. Fordyce was declared to be of higher stamp than most of the neighbouring ladies; and my father was much pleased with the two clergymen, while as we drove along he kept on admiring the well-ordered fields and fences, and contrasting the pretty cottages and trim gardens with the dreary appearance of our own village.  I asked why Amos Bell’s home had been neglected, and was answered with some annoyance, as I pointed down the lane, that it was on our land, though in Hillside parish.  ‘I am glad to have such neighbours!’ observed my mother, and I kept to myself the remarks I had heard, though I was still tingling with the sting of them.

We heard no more of ‘they Fordys’ for some time.  The married pair went away to stay with friends, and we only once met the old gentleman, when I was waiting in the street at Wattlesea in the donkey chair, while my mother was trying to match netting silk in the odd little shop that united fancy work, toys, and tracts with the post office.  Old Mr. Fordyce met us as we drew up, handed her out with a grand seigneur’s courtesy, and stood talking to me so delightfully that I quite forgot it was from Christian duty.

My father corresponded with the old Rector about the state of the parish, and at last went over to Bath for a personal conference, but without much satisfaction.  The Earlscombe people were pronounced to be an ungrateful good-for-nothing set, for whom it was of no use to do anything; and indeed my mother made such discoveries in the cottages that she durst not let Emily fulfil her cherished scheme of visiting them.  The only resemblance to the favourite heroines of religious tales that could be permitted was assembling a tiny Sunday class in Chapman’s lodge; and it must be confessed that her brothers thought she made as much fuss about it as if there had been a hundred scholars.

However, between remonstrances and offers of undertaking a share of the expense, my father managed to get Mr. Mears’ services dispensed with from the ensuing Lady Day, and that a resident curate should be appointed, the choice of whom was to rest with himself.  It was then and there decided that Martyn should be ‘brought up to the Church,’ as people then used to term destination to Holy Orders.  My father said he should feel justified in building a good house when he could afford it, if it was to be a provision for one of his sons, and he also felt that as he had the charge of the parish as patron, it was right and fitting to train one of his sons up to take care of it.  Nor did Martyn show any distaste to the idea, as indeed there was less in it then than at present to daunt the imagination of an honest, lively boy, not as yet specially thoughtful or devout, but obedient, truthful, and fairly reverent, and ready to grow as he was trained.